Happy Birthday!: And Other Stories (12 page)

‘Well, in her own way she did.'

‘It's difficult for her right now. She had told me that she would talk to her friend today. I didn't know that friend was you. Small world.'

‘Small world, indeed,' Bhanu says, wondering how the doctor goes home to his wife when he's been with another woman.

‘So, did you say yes?'

‘No, I did not,' Bhanu replies indignantly. ‘She can take care of the baby herself. And maybe you should help out as well.'

Dr Hussain tilts his head at her in puzzlement. ‘What? How will she take care of the baby after she's passed on?'

Silence fills the space of Bhanu's anger.

She blinks in confusion. ‘P … passed on?' Her voice comes out in a shout, much louder than she expects. ‘What are you talking about, Dr Hussain?'

Dr Hussain observes her for a moment before speaking, ‘Well, her cancer has left her with four, maybe five months at most.'

Memories of Genevive and Bhanu, laughing, playing and hugging in this room, push against the stillness that's gripped the room by its neck.

‘She wasn't very clear,' Bhanu hears herself mutter weakly. ‘I don't understand. So you are not the father of her child?'

‘Father?' Dr Hussain asks in shock. ‘There is no known father, my dear. Genevive got pregnant through artificial insemination.'

‘Artificial? How? How could she even afford it?'

‘She took a loan using her apartment as collateral.'

‘But … why? Why would she do this? She never cared about having a baby.'

‘Genevive didn't do this for herself. She came to my clinic one day, more than a year ago, asking if it was possible for her to have a baby for a friend of hers. The friend couldn't conceive, she told me. I had many long consultations with her about it, over several weeks. It was a difficult decision. What will people say? How will it change her life? Affect her relationship with her friend? We discussed it all. Obviously, I didn't know that friend was you,' Dr Hussain says.

He picks up the fallen packet of wafers from the floor and places it neatly on Bhanu's bedside table. ‘She did all this for you.'

‘For me? Then why didn't she tell me?'

‘I guess she wanted to spare you another loss. She wanted to be absolutely sure that the baby was healthy, especially since she was sick.'

Genevive
wanted to spare
Bhanu
any further loss.

‘How serious is Genevive's—' Bhanu can't even say it ‘—her condition?'

‘Very serious.'

‘There must be some mistake, Dr Hussain. She is so young, my Genevive. It can't be.'

‘I wish there was a mistake. But she was diagnosed with lymphoma in her first trimester itself, while undergoing a routine health checkup. I advised her, as did her oncologist, to terminate the baby. It would take a further toll on her body. But she was determined to leave something behind for her friend, for you.'

‘You are a lucky woman,' the doctor adds.

A lucky woman indeed.

‘She said that she couldn't think of anyone who deserved a child more. I hope you agree to adopt that baby.'

Bhanu turns towards the window.

Her reflection fades into the dark of the night, like the end of a promise.

‘Hope,' she says to it.

In the far distance a star twinkles, despite knowing that it is dying from the inevitability of its own brightness.

LEMON AND CHILLI

It's six o'clock. I hear the key turning in the lock and slip into Karan's room, which he shares with me. Preeti is home from work, as usual an hour before my son Rahul. My grandsons—Jay and Karan—run to greet their mother. Their voices and laughter ring through the house.

I sit on the bed and look around. Karan's Yankees Tshirt, which I'd ironed for him earlier this morning, lies discarded on the oak-panelled floor, beside his Nintendo console. On the blue wall he's tacked a poster of John Cena whose muscles burst forth, almost angrily. I contrast his arms with mine—sixty-seven years old with jagged aches and pains. I wonder if his glistening skin will ever look cratered like mine, or his eyes become soft, as mine are, jailed behind their spectacles.

A half hour later, I hear Preeti go into the kitchen. After my wife Karen's death, Preeti insists on cooking alone, but she doesn't seem happy about it. Often she sets the pots down noisily or mutters curses I wish I couldn't hear. I'd help, but dare not offer. I had tried to surprise her once—when I didn't know any better—by making a meal for our family. But she hadn't allowed anyone to eat my food, saying that an elderly man working in the kitchen reflected badly on the woman of the house.

The mustard seeds begin roasting in the pan. I catch a whiff of cardamom and cloves.

Soon after, I smell fresh coriander. The meal is ready.

Rahul is home. Father and son, we walk quietly to the table.

‘This looks delicious,' I say. I know Preeti will not acknowledge the compliment, and she doesn't.

‘Yes it is, Preeti. Please eat, Dad,' Rahul says. He pushes the palak towards me and pours dal over the rice on my plate.

Last night, in what was clearly not a private complaint, I overheard Preeti say: ‘I slave in the kitchen every day to make Indian food, not for us, but for
him
, because I know
he
doesn't eat anything else. And yet
he
pushes the food around in
his
plate, wasting most of it.'

‘Old people eat less, Preeti,' I heard Rahul reason back.

‘Yes, they do. But
he
doesn't eat at all. All my hard work goes to waste.'

I know they're both watching me, so I shove a spoonful of rice and dal into my mouth and swallow, wondering how so much will go down my throat.

After a while Jay's voice chimes in. ‘Daddy, see. I beat Grandpa again. Ate so much more than him.'

‘That doesn't count,' Karan rebuts. ‘Grandpa has had only one bite. I saw.'

Preeti drops a tablespoon noisily on her plate and leaves the table.

~

The next morning, after walking Jay and Karan to Campbell Elementary School, I take a further twentyminute walk to Menlo Park Mall where I meet my group of friends. All of us live in Edison, New Jersey, in the US, and spend our weekdays hanging around the seating area outside the department store Macy's.

I met this group by chance. Five years ago, after Karen's death, I found that I had no one to talk to. Rahul worked long hours at his dental clinic in Trenton. Preeti was busy at her market research firm in Manhattan. I spent my days shuffling Jay and Karan to and from their school, but was otherwise alone at home.

One Monday, after dropping Jay and Karan to school, I decided that instead of going home I'd get a cup of coffee at the nearby mall. It had been months since I'd bought anything for myself. As I was coming out of Rainforest Café I noticed a group of five elderly Indians sitting outside Macy's. They were playing cards and chatting. It was rare to see Indians my age gathered in a group like this; I was unable to look away. I went back the next day to see if they were there—they were—but I didn't approach them, unsure if I'd be welcome in their group. For three more days I did this, and looking at them made me realize how much I missed having someone to talk to.

I hatched a plan. The next week, after school, I took my grandsons to Cold Stone Creamery. Since the ice cream parlour was conveniently located next to Macy's, I told them to sit on a bench opposite the group. It was Dave Pat—shortened from Devinder Patel—who came up to me and struck up a conversation. ‘We all noticed you last week. Why don't you join us, yaar?'

So I sat with this group, which called itself the ‘Mall Rats', and sometimes, as I later found out, ‘House Rats'. Like me, they were Indian immigrants and lived with their children. Basking in the simple joy of being heard, I started going to the mall every weekday during the children's school time.

The others are already at our usual spot when I reach. Amid the familiar noises of the cash register ringing at H&M and the hairdryer warming up at the unisex salon, there's an occasional baby's cry or the guffaw of a rowdy teenager from the light crowd that potters around.

We're chatting amongst each other when Mrs Patel says, ‘Ah! Finally, we can have tea. Divya is here.'

I pat my head as if it still has hair on it—a habit from the past.

Each week one person from the group brings tea for everyone. This week it's Mrs Gupta's turn, which causes a minor inconvenience since she comes only by eleven—later than us all—after dropping her granddaughter to kindergarten.

‘Helloji! Helloji!' she says, hurling three bags on the seat next to me. She's moved here from Nashik only ten months ago. ‘Sorry I be late. Had to walk all the way to Kishore Mart to buy adrak and roads here walk faster than me. Without adrak chai, Kumarji would not enjoy, no?'

She smiles at me through her dentures. A line of sweat has gathered above her upper lip, probably from the hot sun outside. She isn't wearing an ounce of makeup, and her thin mouth looks pale, her light brown eyes vulnerable. The only hint of colour on her is her patchily dyed grey-black hair, knotted at the nape of her neck.

I clear my throat before replying, ‘I always enjoy your tea, Mrs Gupta.'

‘Arre, call me Divya, ji.'

‘Yes, Mrs Gupta.'

Everyone smiles.

We take out our Styrofoam cups as Mrs Gupta rummages through her bags and pulls out two thermos flasks.

‘This is one with sugar,' she says, handing me a flask. ‘And this without sugar, Patelji.' She gives the second flask to Dave.

Dave takes a long sip of the steaming tea and says, ‘Divya, your tea reminds me of my mother's. She used to make the best tea in the world.' His baritone voice emphasizes the words ‘best' and ‘mother'.

His wife, Mrs Patel, looks up from her knitting. Her sari, draped a little short around her portly frame, edges higher, and it is only thanks to the long cotton socks she wears—out of modesty, I conclude—that the skin on her legs remains hidden from view. She says, ‘His diabetes has gone to his head. He never compliments anyone without mentioning his mother first.'

Dave retorts, ‘Another spontaneous combustion,' and we all laugh. They're the only couple left among us and their outbursts remind us of our own spouses, dead and gone.

‘Is that smell of curry coming from your bag, Divya?' Raj Sharma simpers. He tightens the brown muffler around his spindly neck and zips up his black woollen jacket, even though the mall's air conditioner is set to high today.

I sniff the air too and catch a familiar smell that I'm unable to place.

‘These are just smell of readymade curry I buy earlier for my son,' Mrs Gupta says, shifting in her seat, giving me a sidelong glance. That's when I realize that Mrs Gupta's big bag contains our little secret. I smile at her conspiratorially.

Two days ago, in an excited voice, Mrs Gupta had told me that she would be making a special lunch for me today. She'd added, ‘Please not to tell others. It will be difficult no, to make lunch for so much people?' I guess that Mrs Gupta wants to spend time alone with me—as I do with her—but is probably afraid that our group will gossip, not realizing that friendship is deliberate and measured at our age: its interferences and judgements only fool the young.

‘Shiney used to love curry, especially shrimp curry,' says Dave quietly, adjusting the cushion he is sitting on. On his right is a Victorian walking stick with a gilded spire, a gift from the Mall Rats for his rheumatoid arthritis.

Last month, a former group member—Shiney—whom I'd never met, succumbed to a stroke. He was Dave's neighbour and for fifteen years did nothing but look after his grandchildren. Once they grew up, he was told to move out; his son wanted ‘space'. An old-age home, which we associated with a sterilized walk to the guillotine, was not an option, so Shiney rented a small studio apartment and lived there alone. He slept there alone and he ate there alone. Soon he stopped talking and came to the mall irregularly; then his visits ceased completely.

Still, as they all shut their eyes and mutter a little prayer for Shiney, I feel nothing. Death has become so predictable that I have neither the youthful reverence of it nor the middle-age fear.

Though my eyes are too jaded to perform, I notice Raj's eyes fill up. He unlocks a Ziploc bag containing pink, white and brown tablets. After watching his wife die slowly from cancer, Raj treats his body with dizzying alertness, like a first-time parent with his newborn.

Death does this to people: it makes cowards, preachers and mourners of the living; makes the dead—ignoble or not—objects of respect for what they achieve before the rest of us.

Dave, his breath heavy, says, ‘I told Shiney: “Even in Rome, do as the Americans do.” Develop interests aside from your children. Look at Steve and Karen, my American neighbours. They didn't revolve their life and money around their children. Now in their old age, they are living in style, riding their Harley on Monday afternoons. I wish Shiney had listened. I know it wasn't the stroke that killed him; it was the silence.'

Dave's eyes become wet. Mrs Patel wipes his fogged glasses and puts them back on him.

We're all startled by a flash. We turn around to see four teenagers. One of them has a cellphone with which he's taken a photo of us.

‘Don't stare. It will only encourage them,' Mrs Patel hisses to Mrs Gupta. She has a point. Sitting in the mall day after day, like mannequins on public display, we have become objects of ridicule, especially in the easy black-or-white judgement of the young. We have to stay as invisible here as we do in our homes.

Mrs Gupta keeps staring at them. It's difficult—I know—for her to let go of her Indian ways. We'd been alone once—when everyone else had left early—and she'd cried to me about the silence in her life. With little respect and no rights, her life in India as a widow had become difficult, so she quickly accepted her son's invitation to move to the US. ‘Here no one is home, no one come home. My ear it want to hear knock of neighbour or sabziwallah. I want to gossip nicely with my friend. But I am completely alone whole of day,' she had said softly.